


Gethsemane's Wake

by Jenwryn



Category: Death Note
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-24
Updated: 2008-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:01:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sachiko sits in the kitchen and hears the clock tick... They have told her impossible things and now the world has ceased to make sense.</p><p>Spoilers for Vol.12, etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gethsemane's Wake

**Author's Note:**

> I guess you can see a few of my own personal pet theories here (like the idea that Light inherited his tidiness from his mother; and the ways in which different people react to grief, especially children to that of their parents, at least as I have seen it), and also a het ship that I secretly find adorable (but you'll have to squint perhaps to see it). Mostly it's angst, though, for very obvious reasons.
> 
> For Chamyl, wishing her a Merry Christmas!

Sachiko sits in the kitchen and hears the clock tick. It's irregular somehow – _tock, tick, tick, tock, tick. _She wonders if she simply never noticed it before, or if time itself has actually altered in the after-shadow of this implausible new world's birth. It's surreal, the way that everything has curled crookedly in upon itself. The sun glints in between vertical white strips at an unforeseen angle, the blinds not positioned quite right, not quite the same distance from each other, because it was Sayu who had pulled them open this morning; it was Sayu who had set breakfast on the table even while Sachiko remained still, remained still and in silence. It was Sayu who had tried to urge her up to bed the night before, tried to urge her awake and back to life but, in the end, it was also Sayu who had kissed her on the forehead and left her be. And so Sachiko had sat there, and said nothing, and sat there, and let the clock tick.

That was where she'd been, so much earlier, when they'd told her the news.

She'd been reading a magazine when the pale boy had come, and little Matsuda-san with him.

(_Why Matsuda-san? _she can remember thinking, even in the midst of that moment of horror, _why Matsuda-san?_ and he and Sayu had stood awkwardly in the kitchen doorway, and the young detective had bowed and smiled uncertainly at Sachiko, as she sat with her magazine slid unnoticed to the floor at her feet, and the tea before her growing cold.)

The white-haired boy had told her, told her, told her the impossible thing, the unreal; told her that the government had forbidden that she know, but that he was telling her anyway, because he thought it was her due; because he understood, he said, what it was like to loose someone you love. And the white-haired boy had gazed at the wall unseeingly, his eyes blank, and twirled at his hair like a little doll. Sachiko had seen it, seen it, seen it and heard it and still the whole world was as white and vague as he was, and as blank as his eyes.

Dead, dead, all her menfolk dead now, and Sayu half-broken.

But Sayu seemed somehow strong. It was Sayu who had spoken with Matsuda-san and the pale boy, Sayu who had served the tea, Sayu who cleared the table, Sayu was the one who had remained by Sachiko's side until late and then, only then, sighed once, and turned the lights down low, checking the locks before putting herself to sleep, soft footfalls padding up the stairs, and then silence. When had Sayu become the grown-up, the woman? When had Sayu gained the presence of mind, the calmness of spirit, the gravity of self-composure to be capable of saying _yes _and _no _and _thank you for your honesty _and _I am sorry to hear of your own loss._

(Matsuda-san had looked uncomfortable, because the white-haired boy's loss was a man, a man he had loved, and how did Sachiko know this? Who had told her? The world swims in grey, and Matsuda-san should not have been there, though he needed it more than anything.)

The young detective with the painful eyes was the one who had killed her son. Sachiko doesn't remember them telling her that, either, but still she knows, she knows, she knows because she saw it in the way he looked at her; even if he didn't deal the final blow she knows he made him fall.

And Sayu had found a small, tired smile to share with him, her brother's killer, because he was breaking, and she could see it, and so could Sachiko, but Sachiko doesn't have enough heart left to share.

And the clock _tick tick tocks _and the sound is irregular, and dawn has come and been, and the microwave oven hums to itself in the corner of the room and shades the coffee machine beside it into finely hatched shadows.

Still Sachiko sits and waits.

Her son was Kira.  
Her son was Kira.  
Her son was Kira.

Kira was her son.

The clock should have stopped, the clock should have ceased--

But it _ticks_, and it _tocks_, and Sachiko Yagami sits at the table and waits for reality to find its way back to her because this, this, this cannot be real.


End file.
